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The Market as Censor

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Diane B. Paul
Diane B. Paul*
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts-Boston
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Extract

In 1920, John B. Watson and Rosalie Rayner reported the results of an experiment with an eleven-month old infant, “Albert B” (Watson and Rayner, 1920). Their study of this single subject was methodologically flawed and produced ambiguous results. Nevertheless, it became the psychology textbook classic case of conditioned emotional responses. With the exception of Pavlov's dogs, probably no story has been cited more often than that of “Little Albert.”

I was led to the Little Albert story as the result of an earlier study of genetics textbooks. Some years ago, I began work on a history of the “nature-nurture” controversy. One aspect of this project involved an analysis of textbook treatments of the genetics of intelligence. I had expected to find a rough continuity of views from the 1920s until the late 1970s, when the effects of the Cyril Burt scandal should have been fully felt in genetics texts. (The claim of a high heritability for I.Q. was supported primarily by Burt's [fabricated] studies of separated identical twins. Leon Kamin identified serious problems with Burt's results in 1974, although actual fraud was not proved until 1979 [see Kamin, 1974; Hearnshaw, 1979].)

Type
Research Article
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , Winter 1988 , pp. 31 - 35
Copyright
Copyright © The American Political Science Association 1988

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